Thirty-five
June 12, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I told Dr. Diamant today that the journal idea is not working. She wanted to know why. I told her that I didn’t feel better after writing to you. I actually felt worse. She said sometimes on the road to healing, you must reopen an old wound. It will hurt again, maybe as much as or more than it did when it was first inflicted, but as you reconnect with and embrace the healing process, it will begin to hurt less. Sometimes a broken bone does not heal properly and there is unrelenting pain because bones that aren’t supposed to touch are rubbing up against each other. The only way to fix it is to break the bone again and reset it. That’s the only way it can heal properly. You have to break the bone again.
That was her way of explaining that as I write to you, I might feel worse before I feel better.
I suppose that makes sense.
But I didn’t know what else to say to you. Dr. Diamant asked if I would feel okay if she read what I had written so far. I let her read it.
Dr. Diamant said she was very proud of me for being so honest with you and that I should keep going. Keep going how? I said.
She suggested that I start at the beginning where you and I left off because if I were to see you again, that’s what I would want to hear from you. I’d want to know what happened to you after we were parted.
I admit I’m afraid to go back to that day, Emmy. I’ve placed it so far in the back of my mind. I worry that by dragging it up from that dark place where it’s been sleeping, I will relive it. And if I relive it, then I will again become that silent girl who can’t sleep at night. Dr. Diamant told me that little girl has grown up. I can speak to that seven-year-old inside me and tell her she survived this. I don’t need to be afraid of looking back to the place where she was because that place is just a memory, and memories have no power but what I allow them.
I will try very hard to keep that in mind as I write.
Simon is sitting here next to me. He doesn’t know everything about what happened the day my life changed, but he knows how hard this is for me. I told him I would let him read this journal when I am done so that he will know what he’s dealing with. That seems only fair. In the meantime, we are sitting side by side at my kitchen table with only a teapot between us. He is reading while I write these words to you. And every so often he gently rubs my back and refills my teacup.
So here we go. Back to the beginning.
I awoke to the sound of sirens.
At first I thought you had not left the flat because it seemed you had only just been at my side a second earlier, fluffing the sofa pillows and telling me to stay where I was and that Mum would be home soon.
I called for you as the sirens wailed but you did not answer. I heard popping sounds, the far-off echoes of the antiaircraft guns, and thundering booms that seemed to come from up underneath the earth. You did not tell me what to do if the sirens went off. So I stayed on the sofa and covered my ears with the throw pillows. I screamed for you—and for Mum—even though I knew I was alone.
Then I heard the whistles of the bombs, some far away and some near, and I began to hear the explosions as they landed, despite the pillows over my ears. I felt them in my chest, in the very depths of me. This wasn’t a drill. This was real. The Germans were bombing London.
Instinctively I knew I should run for cover but you told me to stay in the flat. Mum was coming. I scrambled to the corner with the sofa pillows and crouched there. I remember crying and how my wails sounded like the sirens outside.
But then a bright flash and a thunderous whack shook the flat. The front window shattered. Confetti-like glass blew into the room and fell on my hair and in my lap. Everywhere.
I screamed for you.
I screamed for Mum.
I tossed the pillows and sprang for the front door. When I opened it, I could see that the row of flats across the street was wrapped in a fog of powdered debris. A gaping hole stretched across where front doors and upper floors had been. The air was thick with smoke and fire and the buzzing of giant insects, which were the planes that I could not see. It was as if I had been transported to hell.
All I could do was stand there and scream for you.
Then there were arms around me. I heard a voice say my name. At first I thought it was an angel, come to pluck me out of hell. And then I thought it was you, Emmy, waking me from a nightmare. I fell into those arms and I felt myself being lifted.
I opened my eyes to tell you I was afraid and I saw that I was not dreaming. You were not holding me there on the sofa while I pulled myself out of a tormented sleep. I was in Thea’s arms.
Where’s your mum? Where’s Emmy? she shouted as she carried me toward her house.
I could not answer her.
A boom split the air as another bomb fell not far away. Thea stumbled and then caught her balance against the door frame. She dashed with me through her front room and I remember all of her furniture was covered in white sheets. Then we were on her back step and I saw what Thea had been up to when the sirens went off. Her two cats and the four kittens, much larger now than they had been when we left for the countryside, were laid out on her back steps. They were lying so strangely still in the midst of all that chaos. I knew they were dead. She had gassed them with ether, Emmy. So that they wouldn’t starve on the streets as she and her mother evacuated to a relative’s home in Wales. I didn’t know that many London pet owners euthanized beloved pets that they couldn’t take with them when they fled the city. Thea and her mother were leaving London the next day. Her mother was already at a hotel near Paddington station. Thea had come back to the flat to take care of the cats so that her mother wouldn’t have to see. She had just finished her dreadful chore when the sirens began to scream and so did I.
I learned all of this from Granny much later. All I knew then as Thea ran with me to her Andy was that the kittens I had loved and played with and called special names were dead.
It was dark and clammy inside the shelter. Every time a bomb shook the earth, the Andy’s walls rumbled. Thea held me in her arms on a cot on the floor, rocking me back and forth while she sang Christmas carols. I don’t know why she did that. Granny said later it was because she didn’t have to concentrate on the words; they were just right there. Or maybe it was because Christmas carols made us think of presents, Father Christmas, peppermint, and Baby Jesus. Things that make us feel safe and loved and happy.
I don’t know how long the raid lasted. I just remember there being a moment when the bombs stopped and the booms outside were replaced with the wail of emergency-response vehicles. When we crawled out of the shelter, we saw that the world around us had become colorless except for the orange hue of hundreds of fires. Ash and dust swirled.
Thea steered me past the cats. Their lifeless bodies were peppered with bits of roofing tile.
She led me back to our flat, calling Mum’s name: Annie.
Julia, did your mum bring you back here from Gloucestershire? she asked as we stood in the living room.
I shook my head no.
How did you get back, sweetie? Did Emmy come with you?
I had no voice to tell her.
What are your foster parents’ names? Do you know where they live?